College of Engineering
EECS Instructional & Electronics Support Groups
/share/b/pub/reports/managers/Spring_2004
Sep 12, 2004
EECS Instructional Computing - Review and Plans
-----------------------------------------------
Spring 2004
CONTENTS:
Current InitiativesRecent ImprovementsFinal Year for Nomadic laptop loan programLab Space AllocationsNew Equipment installed in FY 2003-2004Budget PrioritiesFurther referencesNotable EventsCurrent Initiatives
-------------------
1) new in June 2004:
The EECS network group has extended the campus AirBears wireless
network to floors 1-3 in Cory Hall and 2-4 in Soda Hall.
EECS will upgrade the Instructional Computer Graphics lab (349 Soda)
with 14 Macintosh G5s. These are being funded joinly by the Weiner
Fund, EECS Instruction and faculty donations.
EECS Instruction has purchased 2 new SUN V440 servers to improve the
computing resources for classes such as EE141 (Cadence) and CS186
(databases).
2) 'named' accounts on Windows
Instructional 'named' accounts are now created on Win2K as well as on
UNIX (started in Feb 2004). Students who qualify for these accounts
include all EECS ugrad and grad majors, as well as students in many
EECS classes. The 'named' account is potentially a student's one and
only Instructional account. For EECS majors, it does not expire each
semester. (We do still create specialized 'class' accounts for some
classes, notably the CS Lower Division and several EE lab classes).
Instructional 'named' accounts have been on the Instructional UNIX
systems for over 15 years, but we have only created 'class' accounts
on Windows until Feb 2004. The Instructional and IDSG groups needed
the time to establish procedures for coordinating our user entries in
the shared departmental Windows database.
Some of the benefits to this include:
* Our Windows computers are now available to many classes (notably
EE upper division) that were formerly limited to UNIX. They need
this because their CAD software is increasingly available on Windows
and we have reduced the number of UNIX seats as our lab space has
shrunk.
* These Instructional users will no longer be dependent upon UNIX
labs. They can still login to UNIX from Windows labs if needed.
* These Instructional users may not need an additional Windows 'class'
account just to access Windows software. This will reduce the number
of class accounts we have to create each semester.
* For EECS majors, the Instructional accounts on Windows will remain
active as long as they are here.
For more information about the Instructional computer accounts, see
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=Named-Account-Policy
3) Improved email services
The Instructional email server was moved to a more powerful server
("Imail") in January 2003. It now provides a secure SSL-based IMAP
service as well as the traditional UNIX NFS-based mail service. This
is a step in our conversion from NFS-based to IMAP and WEB-based mail
services. Anti-spam filtering is now running. Email is rejected if
it is from a non-existent or blacklisted address.
(http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/notices.html#imail-jan09)
The Instructional email server ("Imail") will soon have a WEB site
for individuals to read and post email, set email forwarding and
set email filtering. This will make it easier for users to manage
their email and to decrease spam.
4) Vodaphone Wireless Lab
111 and 117 Cory are being converted into a new lab for courses in
wireless techlologies. EECS has received a large grant for this new
curriculum. The classes will include: EECS117, EECS217, EECS221A,
EECS226A, EECS224, EECS225x, EECS229, EECS290, EECS298, CS294. The
lab is managed by Ferenc Kovac and may be shared with research groups.
5) NetApp fileserver
IDSG and NetApp donated a NetApp file server to Instruction in Fall
2003 (postponed from Summer 2003). The NetApp has terabytes of
storage and is fully redundant. It may allow us to:
- retire our old Win2K home directory server ("Fileservice")
- increase disk quotas for our long-term 'named' accounts
- share a single home directory between UNIX and Win2K accounts
The NetApp will be phased into service. We will have to implement a
disk-to-disk backup scheme to provide timely daily archiving for the
increased disk capacity. We will probably use one of our current home
directory servers for that. We have purchased a new tape library ($12K)
for the NetApp.
6) Previous semseter achives on-line
CS faculty often need to review student files from the previous semester
to resolve grading conflicts, etc. This has always been difficult once
we have archived the data to tape and deleted it from the disks. So we
will set up a new server ("last-semester.cs" or etc) that is a snapshot
of the environment at the end of the semester, and make that available
to instructors during the next semester.
Recent Improvements
-------------------
1) hanging gardens in Soda labs
Thanks to the efforts of Jeffrey Varga and other members of the CSUA,
the second floor Instructional labs in Soda Hall now have an arboreal
grace, due to the silk plants they recently installed. Jeffrey
patiently sought the approval of the department bureaucracy and
presented a convincing case for this. Our labs now rival the
ancient Gardens of Babylon as one of the wonders of the world.
2) free Microsoft sofware for EECS students at home
Free Microsoft software downloads are now available to students in EECS
classes (started in June 2003). Microsoft donated a file server and
software licenses so that EECS students can obtain copies of Windows,
Visual Studio/.NET compilers and other applications. This service
helps our students by allowing them to do assignments using Microsoft
software on their home computers. It helps the department because it
will reduce the demand for access to Win2K computers in our labs.
The procedure starts at http://msdnaa.eecs.berkeley.edu.
3) Intel grant: new servers for Linux apps
We received a grant from Intel in Fall 2003 for 4 new DELL 1750
servers for application software such as Cadence on Linux (EE141).
We did not receive new PCs for 349 Soda (CS184, CS284, CS294).
4) InstCD v 4.0
The fourth version of the Instructional Software CD has been prepared.
It has a new version of the "Stk" program that CS Lower Division
classes use to implement "scm", as well as updates to several share-
ware applications. We will have 1000 copies made in Spring 2004.
It is free to all students in EECS classes.
(http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/notices.html#instcd)
5) AirBears in Instructional labs
Instruction funded the installation of several AirBears access points.
AirBears is the campus-wide wireless network. Students with their
own wireless laptops can access AirBears for free in the vicinity of
the Instructional labs in Soda, Cory and Hearst Field Annex.
(http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=laptops.help)
6) Lab Fee for Excess Printing
We have started a policy of enforcing printer page quotas. We were
approved by COE to charge students for printer use beyond a free quota
that is based upon the classes they are in. Our goal is to control
costs (not to make money). Instruction has a 5% budget cut this year,
and other student labs on campus (IS&T, Res Halls) already impose
printing fees. Our current quotas for free printing are computed as:
100 pages per course credit, and 100 additional pages if you are a CS
or EE undergraduate or graduate. We will charge $12 for an additional
200 pages. The quotas are reset each semester and purchases are not
refundable. Students can check their quotas and authorize us to bill
them for more pages via http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webacct/.
7) CAD Tools Software
Synopsys purchased Avanti! last year and now provides 3 major CAD tool
packages that are used in EECS: SYNOPSYS, TCAD and HSPICE. Instruction
has purchased licenses for all of these via the "University Bundle".
We are sharing these licenses with researchers such as the Device Group.
8) Labs moved to Hearst Field Annex (HFA)
Two Instructional UNIX labs (for CS3 and CS61A) and the CS SelfPaced
Center moved to Hearst Field Annex (HFA) building C for the start of
the Fall 2003 semester. HFA is between Barrows Hall and Bancroft Ave.
We have been displaced from Davis Hall to accommodate construction of
the new CITRIS building (see http://www.citris.berkeley.edu/).
CS3 and CS61A labs will remain in HFA for at least 2 years, then be
relocated again to new facilties, probably in Evans Hall.
Final Year for Nomadic laptop loan program
------------------------------------------
Since August 2000, Instruction has maintained the 79-odd "Nomadic" laptops
that were obtained by Prof Landay and are used by CS160 or CS169. Prof
Landay's research group was collecting a $50 fee from each student to cover
the cost of insurance. The laptop warranties expired in 2003, and we have
decided not to continue the insurance. So the students are now required to
pay only a deposit.
Our request for a self-supporting laptop usage fee was rejected by COE in
Spring 2003.
We will not be able to maintain or replace each laptop as they fail, and
there is no program for funding replacements. So the "Nomadic" program of
laptops for CS160 and CS169 will end in May 2003.
Lab Space Allocations
---------------------
The shared labs are for classes without reserved labs. Sharing a lab is the
most efficient use of the space, but the number of shared computers for EE
classes has been reduced this year.
In August 2003, 117 Cory (14 seats) has changed from a shared to a reserved
lab (for EE100, which was displaced from 120 Hesse Hall). In December 2003,
111 Cory (14 seats) was changed from a shared a reserved lab (for the new
Vodafone lab).
To regain some shared seats, we will open up 105 Cory (30 seats) to shared
access during evenings and weekends. But EE20N will continue to have
exclusive use of the lab for 50 hours a week, so there is a net loss of
access to shared seats.
As a result, the ratio of students to shared seats is very high:
Classes that use shared labs:
EE classes, Spring 2004 (105,199 Cory) = 28 students per computer
CS classes (271,273,275,277 Soda) = 13 students per computer
Classes that use reserved labs:
EE classes (105,119,125,140,204B,353 Cory) = 5 students per computer
CS classes (330, 349 Soda) = 8 students per computer
CS classes (C30, C50 HFA) = 8 students per computer
New Equipment installed in FY 2003-2004
---------------------------------------
- NetApp file server (for Instructional UNIX/Windows accts) (donated by IDSG)
- new Overland AIT-3 Tape Library (for NetApp home dir server) ($11,900)
The NetApp will has 1.5-TB of active disk space.
The Overland PowerLoader has 3.8-TB storage capacity.
The dual drives raise the transfer rate to 86-GB/hour and permit tape
duplication for off-site storage. Based upon our current rate of use,
we need a tape capacity that is about 3 times that of the disk capacity
to archive daily dumps for an entire semester. So we will probably
also need to use some disk space for the incremental dumps.
Budget Priorities
-----------------
Instruction has overcome a $60K deficit from FY 01-02 and ended with a
$20K surplus in FY 02-03. We reduced our expenses by hiring one fewer
student staff member and no new large equipment purchases.
Current large purchase priorities include:
- 20 new chairs for labs ($6000)
- 14 new PCs for 349 Soda Graphics lab ($45000)
- 4 new SUN 2-cpu SunBlades for graphics "render farm" ($10000)
- 1 new multi-processor CPU server for CAD applications ($45000)
Further references
------------------
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~kevinm/citris/http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~iesg/iesglabs.htmlNotable Events
--------------
May 18 - Computer downtime Fri May 28; Cory Hall closes May 28 5pm - June 1 8am
On Fri May 28, computer systems will be down at times throughout EECS.
On Friday afternoon, tests of the UPS in the the Soda Hall machine may
cause the Instructional systems to lose connection to the /usr/sww,
which stalls UNIX logins, etc.
At 5pm on Friday, Cory Hall will be powered down and locked (until 8am
Tuesday June 1) for work on the transformers. Our major servers will
be switched over to an alternate power source and will continue to be
available, but there will be some downtime around 5pm.
These servers will be available throughout the Memorial Day weekend:
inst.eecs.berkeley.edu WEB server
imail.eecs.berkeley.edu Email server
fileservice.eecs.berkeley.edu Windows home dir server
mamba.cs.berkeley.edu UNIX home dir server
cory.eecs.berkeley.edu UNIX login server
nova.cs, star.cs, torus.cs UNIX login servers
h30.cs, h50.cs UNIX login servers
The computer labs in Cory, Soda and HFA C will be locked.
Many Instructional accounts will expire at 9am on May 28. (See
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/End-of-Semester)
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Apr 21 - Imail server and UNIX logins were out of service, 9:30-9:40pm
At about 9:30pm, the Instructional email server (imail.eecs) froze up
and was rebooted. It was back up in about 10 minutes. Besides lack
of access to email, a major side effect of this is that UNIX logins
were stalled. See below for a description of the symptoms.
The cause of the problem was a database server malfunction that
overwhelmed the system resources.
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Apr 12 - Campus-wide power outage interrupted computing (2:30pm-4pm)
At about 2:30pm, a fault occurred that cut electrical power to 65
buildings on the Eastern side of campus, incuding Cory, Soda and
Hearst Field Annex. The power came back in stages over the next
30 minutes or so, but several servers in the department took longer.
Logins and email on most Instructional computers were blocked until
about 4pm while we waited for the servers to stabilize. The major
Instructional computers (including the file servers Fileservice and
Mamba) were kept running by their UPSes, and fortunately the outage
was short enough that the batteries did not drain.
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Mar 30 - Printer usage quotas are now in effect
Instructional UNIX and Windows accounts now have page limits on the
Instructional shared printers in Soda, Cory and Hearst Field Annex.
The print quotas this semester are computed at 25 pages for each
course credit that the account is being used for. In addition,
students who are EE or CS undergraduate of graduate majors are
given an additional 25 pages per semster on their print quotas.
The print quotas are reset each semester. Unused pages will NOT
be credited to you in future semesters.
If you exceed your print quota, your next print job will be replaced
with a "QUOTA EXCEEDED" page. That page explains that you can logon
to http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webacct to view your print quota
allocation and to purchase additional pages. Pages that you purchase
will be billed to you, at a rate of $12 (non-refundable) for 200 pages.
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Feb 25 - Campus-wide power outage on Wednesday evening
Power went off on Campus on Wednesday Feb 25 for about 6 minutes, from
10:41pm-10:47pm.
The Instructional labs and servers were brought back into service that
night by the after-hours efforts of dedicated staff. The UNIX server
"h30.cs" and the HFA C30 lab remained down until Thu at about 10am.
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Feb 19, 2004 - Instructional Windows 'named' accounts are now available
Instructional 'named' accounts are now available on Windows as well as
UNIX. Students who are eligible for 'named' accounts include EE and
CS majors (ugrad and grad) and students in many EECS classes.
199 Cory and 330 Soda are general access Instructional labs with PCs.
You can request a 'named' account by logging in as '<B>newacct</B>'
(password 'newacct') in 199 Cory, 273 Soda or via 'ssh' to
cory.eecs.berkeley.edu. If you already have an Instructional 'named'
account on UNIX, you can run 'newacct' again to get a matching account
on Windows.
Note that several classes only get 'class' accounts, and some of those
are only on UNIX. To see the type of accounts that are given to a
class, please search for it on http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/labs/.
For some technical tips about using your Windows account, please see
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=microsoft.help.
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Feb 17, 2004 - newest EECS Instructional CD is delayed
EECS Instruction provides the InstCD for students in our courses.
The CD contains a collection of public domain software used in EE
and CS courses. It is provided free by EECS Instruction for students
to use on their home computers.
We have run out the old version (v3.0) and the new version has been
delayed. In the meantime, students can download the programs they
need from the on-line copy of the CD, at
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~instcd
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Dec 2002 - Non-SSL IMAP Support on imail.eecs has ended
Non-SSL IMAP on imail was disabled on Dec 2, 2003.
Now, imail.eecs only accepts IMAP connections that are using the SSL
security protocol. This affects people who have setup Netscape,
Mozilla, or any mail program using IMAP, but did not check the SSL
option.
Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#email
for information.
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Sep 12 - off-campus network access reduced because of attacks
The UC Berkeley campus network security (SNS) group has announced that
as of 12:00 noon, Friday, September 12, several network ports used by
Windows are being blocked at the campus border. The ports that are
blocked are TCP/135, TCP/139, TCP/445, TCP/593, UDP/135, UDP/137,
UDP/138, and UDP/445. The impact of these blocks is that several
Microsoft services including file sharing, access to Exchange mail
servers, and remote desktop access will not function across the border
of the campus network. This is necessary to stop the spread of several
fast-moving and destructive viruses.
At home, you may see error messages in Windows such as
"Access denied"
"The network path was not found"
"Unable to connect because the RPC server is unavailable"
when you try to access computers on campus.
This does not prevent access to any campus WEB sites.
Logins into UNIX systems are uneffected. So to transfer files between
your Windows computer at home to your Instructional Windows directory
on Fileservice, you can use your UNIX account as a transfer point:
1) Login to UNIX (such as cory.eecs.berkeley.edu) with SSH Secure Shell
2) Use the SSH Secure File Transfer program to copy files between your
Windows PC at home and your UNIX account
3) Use the UNIX "smbclient" command to copy the files between your
UNIX directory to your Windows directory.
Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#file_transfers
for examples of how to do this.
If you use a PC running Windows, it is critical that you apply patches
regularly to protect yourself. Microsoft will automatically check your
computer and install patches from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com.
SNS's IT Security Resources page lists additional ways to get help:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:2002/resources.html
For more information about the problem from Microsoft, see:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms03-039.asp
For more information on securing your computer, see:
http://security.berkeley.edu/bestpractices.html
For more information on email viruses, see:
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=email.help
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Fall 2003 - Forgot your password on the Instructional computers?
<u>For named accounts:</u>
Login as 'newacct' (password 'newacct') in 199 Cory, 273 Soda or
'ssh' to cory.eecs.berkeley.edu). Enter your Student ID number. Then
select the new "p" option for resetting your password and reprinting a
form. The form will be printed the next weekday and will be available
in 391 Cory after 1pm.
Named accounts look like 'gbush' or 'bclinton'.
<u>For class accounts:</u>
Go to the sys admin staff for the lab you are assigned to use
(see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~iesg/iesglabs.html).
Bring your initial class account form or student ID card.
There is no on-line procedure for resetting the password of a class
account.
Class accounts look like 'cs61a-aa' or 'ee141-agore'.
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May 2002 - your LOST+FOUND directory
Mamba.cs, the Instructional UNIX home directory server, crashed on
April 29 and was down for 33 hours. For an explanation of the
circumstances, please see the Spring 2002 Managers' Report
(http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~iesg/reports.cgi?file=/home/aa/staff/inst/public_html/reports/managers/Spring_2002)
A number of files and home directories were not restored to their
proper names and locations. When we couldn't determine where the
files should go, we put them a directory called LOST+FOUND in your
UNIX home directory.
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Symptoms when UNIX email or home directories are missing:
- "home directory is /" error message when logging in
- session hangs up if you try to 'ssh' into an Instructional computer
- unable to read WEB pages from the http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu
- lots of annoying "NFS timeout" error messages on your screen
- new email deliveries will be delayed on imail.eecs
We disable email receipt and relaying through imail.eecs when the
home directory server (mamba.cs.berkeley.edu) is down. No mail is
lost. Computers that send mail queue messages that are not accepted
by a remote server, and they resend the messages periodically until
they are received.
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See http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/notices.html for current notices.
For additional information, please contact us:
Kevin Mullally, ISG Manager | Ferenc Kovac, ESG Manager
EECS Instructional Support Group | EECS Electronics Support Group
378 Cory Hall, (510) 643-6141 | 380 Cory Hall, (510) 642-6952
kevinm@eecs.berkeley.edu | ferenc@eecs.berkeley.edu
|
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/ | http://iesg.eecs.berkeley.edu/
|
UNIX, Win2K computers and software | Win2K computers, software and
in drop-in labs; email and UNIX | equipment in electronics labs,
accounts; UNIX login servers; | AV services.
class and student WEB sites. |
source: ~iesg/public_html/reports/managers/Spring_2004